A CORNER STONE OF 
COLONIAL COMMERCE 

By JOHN A. STOUGHTON 




Copyright ]J^. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



A CORNER STONE 
OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 



This edition of 
A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

is limited to one thousand copies 




5^ 



A Corner Stone 



OF 



Colonial Commerce 



BY 

JOHN A. STOUGHTON 

n 

AtJTHOa OF "WINDSOR FAHMEs" 



ILLUSTRATED 



BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1911 



Copyright^ 1911, 
By John A. Stoughton. 



All rights reserved 
Published, September, 1911 



THE UNIVERSITY PHESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



©ci.A2i;'rjG:^5 



To all those sons and dattffhters of 

New England, who prefer Old Nation- 
alism under the Constitution, rather 
than Executive encroachment and 
New Nationalism without the Consti- 
tution, this brief sketch of the Fathers 
is respectfully inscribed 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Old Priest Williams House, East Hartford, built -^ 

before the Revolution Frontispiece 

Facsimile of Bill for 459 Pounds of Tobacco (tea 

bearker), and Bill of Lading of Schooner ,^ 

"Success" Facing page 6 

Tobacco Beds Covered with Cloth for Sprouting <^ 

Seed, about April 1st " 7 

Facsimile of two pages of Ebenezer Grant's ^^ 

Account Book "10,11 

Field of "Seed Leaf" Tobacco ready for Cut- 
ting. Between 1800 and 2000 Pounds to the 
Acre " 14 '^ 

Cutting Tobacco " 15 ' 

Facsimile of Diploma issued by Yale College to 
Ebenezer Grant, of East Windsor, Connecti- 
cut, October 18, 1726 " 22 

Old David Strong House on South Windsor ^ 

Street • " 26 

Mouth of the Scantic River, South Windsor, 

Connecticut " 27 "^ 

Facsimile of Statement of Account of Brigantine 

" Peggy," 1750 " 32 *^ 

Modern " Seed Leaf " Tobacco Warehouse, East ^^ 

Hartford, Connecticut " 33 

Stringing Tobacco on Lath in the Field ... " 38 
vii 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Interior Views of Warehouse showing Process 

of Casing Tobacco Facing page 39 

Rear View of the Ephraim Grant House, South 

Windsor, Connecticut " 50 

Old Aaron Bissell Tavern as it was at the close 

of the Revolutionary War " 50 

Front Hall of Grant House showing Wainscot ^ 

and Panelling " 51 " 

Sword carried by Colonel Stoughton in the Rev- 
olutionary War, and Flint-lock Musket, six / 
feet long " 51 

Detail of Front Hall of the Grant House show- 
ing original furniture and the ancient clock . " 62 

Showing detail of front of the Grant House, / 

South Windsor, Connecticut, built in 1757 . " 63 

Detail of the front door of the Matthew Rock- 
well House, South Windsor, Connecticut, / 
built before 1750 " 63 

Rear View of the Ephraim Grant House Show- 
ing peculiar reinforced chimney " 70 

Present appearance of the Birthplace of Jona- 
than Edwards, South Windsor, Connecticut " 70 

One of the Old Pitkin Houses in East Hartford, ^ 

Connecticut " Tl 

Burial-place of Timothy Edwards, South Wind- i/' 

sor, Connecticut " 71 

Facsimile of Letter of Chief Justice OUver Ells- 

worth to Captain Roswell Grant .... " 86 

Facsimile of "Pen Knife" Letter of General ^^y 

Washington " 87 



A CORNER STONE 

OF 

COLONIAL COMMERCE 



A POINT indicated by the intersec- 
tion of north latitude 41 degrees, 
47 minutes, with longitude east 
from Washington 4 degrees and 15 minutes, 
lies nearly in the geographical center of 
the renowned "Seed Leaf" tobacco region 
of Connecticut. 

This spot is on Connecticut River, about 
fifty miles north from Long Island Sound, 
and a circle with a radius of eight miles 
from it embraces all the territory which 
first gave the name "Connecticut Seed 
Leaf Tobacco" to the product, whose 
superior quality has long been known 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

throughout the commercial world. Herein 
lay the colonies — Windsor, Hartford, and 
Wethersfield — where tobacco grows to- 
day under improved methods of cultiva- 
tion, even more luxuriantly than ever, and 
although the cultivated area appears to 
have been narrowed somewhat within a 
few decades, and is now compacted pretty 
well in proximity to the Connecticut 
River, yet the increased yield per acre 
and the improved quality are most effec- 
tive refutations of all the pet theories of 
exhaustion and impoverishment of the 
soil that are claimed to attend closely 
upon its rapid and profitable growth. 
The argument against it on that ground 
utterly and signally fails, as will be dem- 
onstrated by the facts of this narrative. 

It is impossible to forget that within 
the limits assumed is to be found also 
the local habitation of that civilization 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

which since 1636, "pushing westward, and 
northward, and southward," has given 
to state and national affairs the impress of 
its own stabihty, even causing the Con- 
stitution of the United States to reflect 
the harmony of its local state institutions. 
Windsor, Wethersfield, and Hartford, the 
three original colonies of the Connecticut 
Valley, contained within their limits all 
the productive upland and bottom lands 
of this region, and to this favored spot 
where Timothy Edwards, father of Jona- 
than Edwards, born in 1703, Roger Wol- 
cott. Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth, Noah 
Grant, grandfather of the President, Silas 
Deane, Noah Webster, John Fitch, in- 
ventor of steam navigation and a host of 
Pitkins, Wadsworths, Trumbulls, and Tal- 
cotts lived and died, their native State 
points with pride, and repeats of each 

that "this man was born there." 

3 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

A strong temptation to retouch the oft 
rewritten story of the part which her 
citizens have played Hes upon all who 
take a pen to review this region so prolific 
in Connecticut's history. The tale is 
never told, the picture of the State is yet 
incomplete, and although the public rec- 
ords have been conscientiously scanned, 
still much of the woof of the historical 
fabric lies hidden largely in scattered 
memoranda, private account books, and 
the fragmentary correspondence of every- 
day life. 

Surely the homely routine of a people 
as illustrated by their simple annals is a 
valuable factor in the sum of knowledge 
regarding their fuller public life. How 
commerce began, with whom it was carried 
on, what commodities were sold and 
bartered, and at what price, — are really 
matters too intimately connected with the 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

growth of a state to be ignored, and to 
know thoroughly of them one must go 
back of formulated legislation on the 
subject. 

Even a wider knowledge of the cost of 
living, the food, the dwellings, the minutiae 
of local government, habits of certain 
individuals, eccentricities and general char- 
acteristics of families, is invaluable to 
one who would thoroughly understand 
the spirit that constitutes a state. 

A few brief and changeful sketches of 
this famed region, drawn from the scat- 
tered memoranda of its early inhabitants, 
may fittingly introduce its era of later 
growth and be quite properly accompanied 
by a little of the history of colonial legis- 
lation on tobacco. 

Captain Ebenezer Grant, of Windsor, 
east of Connecticut River, a great-grandson 
of the renowned Matthew, was about 1740 

5 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

largely interested in the colonial West 
India trade. From his account books, 
which are models of accuracy, and replete 
with memoranda of minute transactions, 
a large insight is given to the beginnings 
of the commercial growth of southern 
New England. 

The series of linguistic somersaults by 
which one of Mr. Grant's neighbors 
charges him with four hundred and fifty- 
nine pounds of *' Tea- bearker," i. e., to- 
bacco, illustrated in the accompanying 
facsimile, — portion of a bill found among 
his papers, — and the equally interesting 
reproduction of a page of Captain Grant's 
account book, are suggestive commentaries 
on the entire absence of any standard of 
orthography in Connecticut. It will be 
noted that the duty of one hundred pounds 
indicates a tariff of considerable intensity, 

but the old gentleman very adroitly mixes 

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A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

his "frait" {i.e. freight) and negro up so 
that the actual cost of the slave is not clear. 

It is not surprising in view of such 
spelling that the colony of Hartford im- 
mediately proceeded to produce the fa- 
mous lexicographer Noah Webster, who 
was born October, 1758, in what is now 
West Hartford, only a few miles from the 
spot where this spasmodic orthography 
flourished. 

Connecticut legislation on tobacco is 
brief and pertinent. The "weed" had 
apparently followed commerce from Vir- 
ginia to Connecticut, and its use found 
easy lodgment in the manners of the 
people. The Connecticut colony within 
two years from the adoption of its con- 
stitution enacted: 

"It is Ordered, that what prson or 
prsons within this jurisdiction shall 
after September, 1641, drinke any other 

7 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

Tobacco but such as is or shalbe planted 
within their libertyes shall forfeit for 
every pound so spent fiue^ shillings, 
except they haue license fro the Courte." 
(Col. Records, vol. i, p. 53, June 11, 1640). 

A modern political economist may well 
doubt whether this regulation is designed 
to prohibit the use or stimulate the culti- 
vation of tobacco. However, very little 
must have been cultivated, for on January 
28, 1646, the General Court passed the 
following law: 

"The order concerning paying 5s. a 
pound for taking tobacco not growing 
within this jurisdiction is repealed." 

This release evidently quickened the 
consumption, for we find the General 
Court on May 26, 1647, premising in the 
following quaint language: 

1 "U" and "V" were used interchangeably by 
the old writers. 

8 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

*' Forasmuch as it is obseauved that 
many abuses are comited by frequent 
takeing Tobacco," an act ordering that 
no person "Vnder the age of 20 years, 
nor any other that hath not allreddy ac- 
customed himself to the Vse thereof," 
should take any tobacco until he procured 
a "Certificat" from some one approved 
in "phisicke" that it is "Vsefull for him." 
A "Lycence" from the court was also a 
necessary qualification. 

The restriction as to age was recently 
made a very proper amendment to the 
present Connecticut law, which forbids 
the sale to and use of tobacco by any 
person under sixteen years. 

But persons armed with the "Certifi- 

cat" and "Lycence" even if their "Owne 

apprehensions" made the use of tobacco 

necessary, were forbidden to take it "Pub- 

licquely"; and to use tobacco in the 

9 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMIMERCE 

"fyelds or woods" "Vnless they be on 
their trauill or joyrny at lest 10 myles" 
was an offense which subjected the offend- 
ers to a "penulty" of sixpence. 

True, a man might enjoy the comfort 
of a smoke at the *' ordinary tyme of 
repast comonly called dynner." But this 
post-prandial felicity was limited by an 
act which ordained that none should take 
any "Tobacco in any howse in the same 
towne wher he liveth w*'' an in the company 
of any more than one who Vseth and 
drinketh the same weed w*'' him at that 
tyme," conviction on all the above offenses 
to be had on the testimony of one "Wit- 
nessed' The legislative restrictions during 
the first fifty years dealt with the weed 
from the moral standpoint. Its use was 
associated in the minds of the lawmakers 
with idleness, loafing, and drinking. In 
the New Haven colony, tobacco appears 

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A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

to have given an early impetus to com- 
mercial legislation, for previous to the 
union with the Connecticut colony, in 
1664, under the charter of 1662, the Gen- 
eral Court of New Haven, sitting at New 
Milford on April 26, 1654, tried Captain 
John Manning on the charge of "supply- 
ing the Dutch with provisions." Now, 
if there was any rival dreaded by England 
and her colonists, it was the complacent 
burgher of New Amsterdam, who envel- 
oped himself in huge clouds of smoke from 
tobacco, somewhat circuitously imported, 
and, with the aggressive silence of a 
cautious and phlegmatic diplomacy, di- 
verted largely to himself the West Indian 
trade of New England; so that when 
good Captain Manning, in defiance of 
the Navigation Acts of Charles II., sought 
immunity from the penalties of the same, 

the Court found that he "hath drawn 
11 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

guilt upon himself by continued willfull 
vntruths or lyes," and proceeded to but- 
tress up the captain's mendacity by proof 
that he had delivered to the Dutch at 
"Munnadoes" (i. e. Manhattan) "thirty- 
six hogsheads of tobacco the one time and 
thirty-five the other," he having "bine" 
[i. e. been] " two time at Verginia since 
he came from Boston." 

Virginia long before this period had 
devoted all her energies to the cultivation 
of tobacco, and even made it a medium 
of exchange. On September 2, 1645, 
Richard Catchman "complayned" to the 
New Haven colony that one Thomas Hart 
had " carry ed away his servant from 
Verginia whereby he was damnified to the 
Vallew of 2000 weight of tobacco in the 
price of her," and on November 1, 1647, 
the will of Nathaniel Cooper, proven in 

New Haven, disposed of "all of the tobacco 
12 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COIVCVIERCE 

I have aboard of the barke Faulcon of 
New Haven then riding near Rikatan in 
Vurginia." 

But with the increased trade came also 
the disrespectful habit of famihar smoking 
against which the sister colony on the 
Connecticut had legislated. Therefore, 
New Haven in 1646 ordered: "that who- 
soever shalbe fownd taking tobacco in an 
vncovered place, or in the streate of the 
towrie, or in mens yards, shall pay 6d. 
fine each time, also if onn trayning dayes, 
either in the company or the meeting 
howse at any time," and again in 1655: 
"It is ordered that no tobacco shall be 
taken in the streets, yards or aboute the 
howses in any plantation or farme in this 
jurisdiction without dores, neere or aboute 
the towne, or in the meeting howse, or 
body of the trayne Souldiors, or any 
other place where they may doe mischief 

13 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

thereby, vnder the penalty of 84 pence a 
pipe or a time, wch is to goe to him that 
informs and prosecuts." Then follow 
certain provisions for enforcing the col- 
lection of the penalty and punishment by 
sitting in the stocks on default of payment. 
The glimmerings of "high protection" 
for the home product are found in the act 
of the Colonial Court at Hartford, which 
in 1662 ordered "that whenever Tobacco 
is landed in this Colony" "there shalbe" 
paid by the master of the vessel or "Mer- 
chant importer" "Vnto the Custome 
Master" of the port for every hogshead 
twenty-five shillings, or twopence per 
pound. Doubtless, the rich valley lands 
soon began to produce their wonderful 
crops; at least the importation fell off 
and on July 15, 1680, Governor William 
Leete of Connecticut replied to certain 
inquiries of "The Lords of his Majesties 

14 




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A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

most privy counciel concerning the trade 
in his Majesties colony of Connecticott." 

*'The comodotie of the country are 
Wheat Peas, Ry, Barly Indian Corn, 
and Porck Beif Woole, Hemp, Flax, Cyder, 
Perry and Tarr, deal boards. Pipe staves. 
Horses. The most transported to Boston 
and there bartered for cloathing." And 
adds later: "We have no need of Virginia 
trade most people planting so much Tobacco 
as they spend." 

A very rapid commercial growth fol- 
lowed closely upon the increased tobacco 
culture, and it soon figured conspicuously 
in the intercolonial and foreign trade. 
The private accounts exhibit the phenome- 
nal fact of a plant whose habitat is in the 
tropics so adapting itself to a climate 
that allows it scarcely more than ninety 
consecutive days from birth to maturity 
in the open air, as to produce in later days 

15 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

from one thousand pounds to two thousand 
five hundred pounds per acre, allowing an 
average of six thousand plants to every 
one hundred and sixty square rods of 
ground. 

As a result of increased demand a little 
local merchant marine grew up, whose 
enterprising owners drove a profitable 
trade with South America, the West 
Indies, and even before the American 
Revolution had quite extensive business 
associations with European houses. 

In South Windsor, formerly a portion 

of East Windsor, is the residence of the 

late Major F. W. Grant. This place is 

now occupied by Roswell Grant, Esq., 

who is of the fifth generation from Samuel, 

the son of Matthew, of Old Windsor. 

On this spot was born Noah Grant, 

grandfather of the President, and here 

lived his brother Captain Ebenezer (pre- 
16 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

viously referred to in this article), who 
retained the homestead after the family 
separated, Noah removing eastward to 
Tolland. About three-fourths of a mile 
below, on the east side of the street, was 
the parsonage of Rev. Timothy Edwards, 
father of Jonathan, who for sixty-three 
years went in and out among his people, 
representing all that was pure, dignified, 
and scholarly in New England Calvinism. 

Mr. Edwards was a graduate of Harvard 
College, and eked out a scanty salary by 
teaching the youth of the colony in the 
classics, and in this had much valuable 
assistance from his ten daughters. Many 
men afterward conspicuous in affairs were 
fitted for Yale College at this humble New 
England home. He records as follows: 

On "January 8, 1728, Mr. Samuel 
Talcott, Gov. Talcott's Son by ye Gov- 
ern" desire came to be instructed in ye 
17 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

Latin Tongue." And in 1738 "Corp" 
Ebenezer Bissell for Teaching his Son 
Aaron ye Latin and Greek Tongues." 

Mr. Edwards also allowed his slave 
Ansars in 1731 to work "2 dayes howing 
indian corn for Samuel Evens Sen' 
£00-04<sh.-00d.'' all of which helped out 
the daily stress for necessaries. In 1750 
or thereabouts, while evidently arguing 
for some increase of compensation, Mr. 
Edwards says: "Ye Price of a Serv*, viz: 
A negro formerly £90, my negro was. 
Now £200 — for a negro woman," a rise 
in the human commodity which seemingly 
filled the old gentleman with grievous 
apprehension for the future. Still, the 
slavery of that day was more like the 
Hebrew bondage, and much evidence of 
kind treatment exists. On November 29, 
1741, Mr. Edwards notes in the margin of 

a sermon that "Phillis, Coh Wolcott's 
18 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

Negro woman desires to Join with this 
C'^'^ in a state of F. C. [i. e., full com- 
munion]." This was about the time of the 
"Great Awakening," and, as he expresses 
it, there was a "Plentifull Raining down 
of Righteousness." 

A Httle south on the opposite side of the 
street from Mr. Edwards lived Governor 
Roger Wolcott, of colonial fame. His 
house stood just south of the road which 
joins the main street from the east, 
thence continuing westward to the river, 
was known as the Governor's Road, 
terminating at the Ferry granted by the 
General Assembly in 1735 as a "favour 
and privilege to the worshipfull Roger 
Wolcott, Esq'." 

The son of Major, afterward Governor, 

Wolcott was also instructed by Mr. 

Edwards, and in 1730 he is charged: "To 

teaching his son Alexander, beside what 

19 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

he paid in March 1730 as I remember 
£00 -045)^. -01c?." For which the Major 
"contra he is Cr.": 
*'Dec' 1730/1. A Bushel of Salt 

by my Negro, 00 - 07 - 00 

"June 29, 1731, By 5 Bushel Y^ 

of Rie by his Indi'^ man, 01-13-00 
"and by sundry Glass bottles for vinegar, 
butter, molasses, &c," until the account 
balances. 

It is evident from the account with 
Major Wolcott that some Indians were 
in a condition of partial servitude. Alex- 
ander, his son, became a prominent 
Revolutionary surgeon and a conspicuous 
citizen. 

But we must view the material condi- 
tion of this portion of Connecticut, prin- 
cipally through the medium of Captain 
Ebenezer Grant's memoranda. His good 
mother Grace (Miner), widow of Samuel 

20 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONL\L COMMERCE 

Grant, Jr., was charged by Mr. Edwards 
with "Teaching her Son Ebenezer," fitting 
him for Yale College; and the young man 
relates in his account book: "October 
the 20th 1724, I came to the Colledge 
again, and the quantity of money yt I 
brought from home with me in s^ month 
was about £4-00 or '^sh. or S-OOc?." 

"When I had got to Newhaven I paid 
to M^ Punderson for ye quarter before 
Commincement about £02-015/l-10(Z. 
my expences down was about 00 - 03 - 02 
For a pound of Chocolat 00 - 04 - 06 

For lying at Balls a few nights 00-01-00 
For a peck of apples 00 - 00 - 06 " 

Young Grant went home December 24, 
and on his return to New Haven bought a 
pair of gloves for one shilling and eight 
pence, and a load of wood for three shillings. 
"Chocolat" and milk are mentioned fre- 
quently in the account, and a "Glass to 

21 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

drink in 00-00-09." It cost seven shil- 
lings to hire a horse to ride forty miles to 
his home in August, and for *' washing my 
closes at Johnsons 00-06-03." He also 
" Paid to the Buttler for sider 00 - 04 - 03," 
and still later "a pint of Rum & a few 
squoses [i. e., lemons for a lemon squash 
or lemonade] 00-01-03," liquid insignia 
that seem to indicate some of the college 
members to be in good and regular so- 
ciety standing. "For making my Coat 
" 01 - 05 - 00," " For Buttons and moldes 
00 - 07 - 03," " For Buccarum [i. e.. Buck- 
ram or Bucram], 00-03-06," and "For 
trimming to my Closes 03-03-07"; and, 
finally, "for making my cloess & bev- 
eridge" the careful student sets down 
" 01 - 18- 03." The follov/ing illustration 
of Ebenezer's diploma is probably the 
earliest Yale diploma in existence in 
Connecticut. 

22 



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/^a^e 22 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

Other entries show that Ebenezer was 
evidently a student who had means enough 
to get through his course without econo- 
mizing. He buys "powder and shoot,'* 
indulges in oranges, pineapples, and speaks 
of "keeping a horse at ye Village." 
"Shades of the mighty!" was New Haven 
ever a village? Tell it not in Hartford! 
But the most perspicuous evidence of his 
diligence as a student is found in the fact 
that he paid "For a Hodden Arithmetick 
00-03-00," and "For 5 dozen of Quills 
00-00-09." 

The private accounts also indicate that 

a lucrative trade in Connecticut products 

must have sprung up about 1700, for not 

long after tobacco that was produced 

above the demands for home consumption 

was exported to foreign ports, and the 

traffic became general and profitable. But 

these scenes of commercial and agricultu- 
23 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

ral prosperity were interrupted by the 
quite frequent demands of the "Pubhque 
Service." Captain Grant's commission 
over a "Train Band East of Connecticut 
River," in Windsor, issued by Governor 
Jonathan Law, October 29, 1742, was no 
empty title. He gives the names of fifty 
men "that went upon an Expedition into 
ye frontiers under my command, Dec. 19, 
1745," and in a memorandum of con- 
viviaUty, which doubtless fell upon the 
rejoicings over the reduction of the French 
stronghold of Louisburg in the previous 
summer, he charges, among other items: 
"Jeremiah Drake, Dr. J^ expense for 
Cape Breton frolick 00 - 04-00," — surely 
not an extravagant pro rata expenditure 
for four veterans to make. The names of 
the other two are not given. 

The homely life of the river colonists 
very rapidly changed under the stimulus 
24. 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

of commercial enterprises. A better class 
of houses soon took the place of the old 
plank frame dwellings. These latter were 
buildings whose sides were commonly of 
two-inch plank, spiked perpendicularly 
on to the heavy frame-work, and either 
clapboarded or shingled on the outside, — 
little studding was used on the inside, — 
and even the partitions between the rooms 
were often of single inch lumber carried 
from floor to cross beams, with a paneled 
base; this often sprung and bowed out 
under the sag of the upper floors, which, 
of course, rested on the beams. A huge 
chimney usually ascended in the middle, 
and of itself afforded substantial support 
to the whole building. This feature of 
the old architecture was retained in many 
houses built dow^n to the period of the 
American Revolution. 

The chimney in the house built by Colo- 

25 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

nel Joseph Pitkin, brother of Governor 
Wilham Pitkin, in East Hartford, in 1726, 
was over nine feet square where it rose 
from the stone foundation in the cellar. 
The cellar in many old houses was on 
the north side, rarely extending, except in 
more pretentious edifices, under the whole 
building. This chimney contained over 
fifteen thousand bricks and a large amount 
of stone. 

The following picture of the David 
Strong house, photographed in 1894, shows 
a house which was old in 1808, and illus- 
trates the improved architecture of the 
East Windsor parish. 

Major F. W. Grant, a grandson of 
Captain Ebenezer, and who was born in 
1794 and died at the age of eighty-seven 
years, — a life-long resident of East Wind- 
sor, — particularly detailed the facts of 




«!'S'*S!!CTrp 



A CORNER STONE OP COLONIAL COMMERCE 

the antiquity of this and many other 
buildings located in East Windsor. The 
bricks are of Windsor manufacture and of 
the standard size prescribed by law; and 
the fissure extending over the south door 
may have been caused by the earthquake 
which Nathaniel Loomis of Windsor 
mentions: "November 17-1755 the Earth- 
quace was about 4 a-clock in morning 
it held about 4 minits the hardest that 
ever came in my time." This shock 
broke the walls of Benjamin Cook's house, 
a short distance above, and called forth 
a practical sermon from Rev. Dr. Eliphalet 
Williams of East Hartford, whose imposing 
mansion furnishes a fine type of the im- 
proved colonial parsonages of the period. 
This building remained in its original 
completeness until 1907. On its walls 
was hung the first wall paper of which 

there is any record east of the river. It 
27 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMIVIERCE 

is located in East Hartford, and was built 
in 1753. 

It must be kept in mind that all of the 
territory of which we speak east of Con- 
necticut River was embraced in the limits 
of ancient Windsor, excepting East Hart- 
ford, which was set off from Hartford in 
1784. The importance of Windsor as 
a commercial center was fully as great as 
Hartford, and even Middletown previous 
to the Revolution ranked as a shipping 
port much above Hartford. Shipbuilding 
became active, and .at the "mouth of 
Scantic," as the junction of that stream 
with the Connecticut about eight miles 
north of Hartford was called, a thriv- 
ing industry grew up. Remnants of 
the magnificent forests of pine and oak 
from which supplies were obtained still 
exist along the tributary streams. 

The authentic record of "The Brig*^« 

28 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

built at Windsor in East Side of y« River 
in y° year 1749 to Eben^ Grant Dr," reads 
in some items as follows: "1748, Sept"- 15 
to help Draw y« Keil with 5 Cattle & }^ 
ptRum 002£-00-00." 

The brigantine was furnished with a 
quarter deck, and on April 28, 1749, a 
charge is made of " 1 - 00 - 00 knees for q'*' 
Deck"; and the same month Captain 
Grant charges the owners: "To myself 
a day to fetch up Long Boat & towe 
vessel to Hartford 01-10-00." 

Captain Fyly [i. e. Filley] appears to 
have superintended the fitting out of the 
vessel, and received on September 7, 1749, 
eighty pounds "to pay ye Rigers." The 
rigging cost three hundred pounds, and 
Mr. John Fyly received "£91-02-09 
for building." Logs for the bilgeways cost 
£2 and the total expenses of construction 
were £939 13^. 9d. 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

The "settlement of Cargo March 13th, 
1750," amounted to £2933 - Ish. - Id., New 
England funds, and the owners were Cap- 
tain Ebenezer Grant l/8th part, Mr. 
Ebenezer Bliss 3/16ths, Mr. Nathan Day 
l/16th, Mr. Allen McLean l/16th, Mr. 
David Bissell l/16th, Mr. Sam' Watson 
l/16th, Mr. Ebenezer Watson l/16th, 
John and Charles Gay lord 1/1 6th, John 
Laurence l/4th, and Ammi Trumble 
1/1 6th. 

The brigantine's bill of lading shows 
twenty-seven casks of tobacco, over four 
thousand feet of lumber, and twenty-six 
horses on "y« proper Acco* and Risque 
of y« Shippers." The tobacco weighed 
10,296 pounds, and on March 23, 1750, 
the vessel left New London for the West 
Indies under command of William Filey 
"for this present voyage." "The hb- 
erty of trade" was £15 05. Qd.y and 

30 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

on May 21, 1750, returned the owners 
£701 0^. Id. at Barbadoes. 

The amount of tobacco shipped on 
various vessels indicates more extensive 
deaHngs in this product than has been 
credited to the period. "Tobac° shyped 
on y« Brig° OHve Hez. CoUiar master for 
Barbad% Nov. 12, 1751," amounted to 
thirty casks, containing 12,664 pounds. 

On November 12, 1752, the brigantine 
OHve received a cargo of 12,764 pounds of 
tobacco for the Barbadoes, and the same 
month 12,749 pounds were "pressed for 
Schooner Ann and shipped." 

In the list of growers are to be found 

the names of most of the Windsor families. 

The Wolcotts, Ellsworths, Bissells, Stough- 

tons, Grants, Talcotts, all grew the "weed" 

for commercial purposes. Captain John 

Ellsworth, who married Annie Edwards, 

sister of the renowned Jonathan, sold 
31 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

Captain Grant 1130 pounds on November 
21, 1752, the total amount purchased be- 
tween November 15 and 23 being 26,110 
pounds. This tobacco was pressed into 
casks for shipment, which cost twenty -five 
shillings each, and contained about four 
hundred pounds apiece, and this year the 
cost of labor for packing was three shill- 
ings per hundred. 

This little fleet of vessels was subjected 
to various regulations and restrictions of 
trade, of which Captain Grant makes 
quaint and suggestive mention. New 
London was then a favorite port of entry, 
and thither on December 13, 1752, he made 
a journey to "Discharge Schooner Ann," 
and records *'pd to Naval Officers 
£l-lQsh.-Od.;' "Bill for Pilotage & Sun- 
dry 14-09-9," "cash pd to Mr. Hall for 
Duty and Cleaning Vessel £540-10-0." 

Some information is obtainable as to the 
32 



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A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

cost of vessels engaged in the commerce. 
A schooner built at Hartford by Mr. John 
Filey in 1750 is estimated as follows: 
"Tunnage97at £20 £1940-00-00," "al- 
lowance for launching was £60-00-00;" 
and for altering from a sloop to a schooner 
£38 125. was charged to the vessel's 
account. 

"Bill for Riging £849-075/i.-6(Z.," while 
Mr. Poyson for £87 Is. Sd. furnished an 
anchor. To make the sails Mr. AUin 
charged £81 16^. 9d., and the total 
cost of construction was £4840 65. 9d. 
Of this the ironwork by Burnham was 
£549 45., and the "Duck" for sails cost 
£368 10s. Labor and sundry articles go 
to make up the remainder. Two top- 
masts in New London cost £9 17^. in 
1751. 

These figures indicate the depreciated 
condition of currency. 
33 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

Some idea of exchange is obtained from 
these accounts: In 1753 Mr. Grant paid 
"PhilKps 4 Dollars -9-0-0." The credit 
of Boston was good. A payment of 
storage -4£- 165. "Boston money" is 
carried out in the account-" 4£ - 165.- Od." 

Numerous vessels are mentioned in 
this East Windsor trade: "The Sloop 
Speedwell, Freeman master, for Barbadoes 
in 1753;" the brigantine Olive, Samuel 
Olcott, master; "Scooner Ann, William 
Filey, master. Brig. Peggy in 1749." 

John and Jonathan Simpson of Boston 
were merchants to whom Captain Grant 
sold tobacco to the amount of 3045 pounds. 
On April 13, 1753, and later he "bought 
of ye Simpsons In Boston, (1) Bar" 4d. 
Nails 46 M at Ssh. - £51 - 15sh. old tenor." 
"2J^ dozi^ Middle length scythes 

cost 41-17-6 

"60lbs. of steel 10- 0-0 

34 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

"and a Grindstone 3-00- 

"all in old tenor. 

" Two half Bar" Powder cost 48 - 00 - 00 
" and 7 Rolls of Duck 182-00-00 " 

Formerly tobacco was raised in a very 
crude manner, principally upon local fer- 
tilizers, the ordinary stable and hog ma- 
nures being used as a stimulant; while so 
late as 1826 the method of hanging the 
crop was by winding wisps of straw around 
the plants, which were hung opposite each 
other in pairs upon poles from twelve to 
fourteen feet in length. The tobacco for 
exportation was largely packed in casks 
in a manner similar to that practiced by 
the Virginia planters. 

About 1850 the use of a coarse twine 
made of jute or hemp was the common 
method of suspension, the plants being 
put on either side of a pole, with the but- 
end projecting an inch or two above the 

S5 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

pole and fastened by a turn of the twine, 
which was carried across the pole to the 
corresponding plant until the whole line 
was filled, the tobacco being usually hung 
in what may be called a criss-cross method, 
in order to give plenty of air space, for 
the purposes of curing, the plants not 
being placed exactly opposite to each 
other. 

For the last fifteen or twenty years, with 
the exception of tobacco raised under 
tents where the leaves are picked from 
the plant without cutting the stalk, the 
method has been to string from five to 
six plants on a lath four feet in length. 
This is accomplished by inserting one end 
of the lath into a light frame, and placing 
upon the other end a spear-shaped steel 
tip which easily penetrates the stalk, 
about two inches from the but-end. The 
laths after being filled are generally trans- 

36 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

ferred to other frames in the field until 
removed to the curing shed. 

The introduction of modern fertilizers 
has done much to improve the quality, 
and in fact now the growth has become 
one of such accurate adjustment that it 
is possible to so fertilize it as to produce 
almost any shade or weight of crop desired. 

This method of cultivation practically 
insures the soil against exhaustion from 
repeated crops. There are several tracts 
of land from one to ten acres in extent 
upon which the writer knows that tobacco 
has been grown consecutively for over 
thirty years, while the testimony of the 
owners is emphatically to the point that 
in weight and quahty the crop on the 
average has improved and in many cases 
the soil requires less fertilizing than 
formerly. 

Tobacco is a surface feeder, and does 

37 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

not sap the land like corn, rye, grass, or 
potatoes. 

A most interesting experiment was tried 
by the late Major F. W. Grant of South 
Windsor, who detailed the results to the 
writer. A tract of about five acres of 
land was carefully ploughed, harrowed, 
and fertilized up to a high point for tobacco 
cropping. Upon one-third of the tract 
tobacco was set out, another third was 
devoted to Indian corn, and the remain- 
ing third to potatoes, the result being 
very heavy and profitable returns from 
all the crops. 

In the fall of the same year the entire 
tract was uniformly ploughed and har- 
rowed, and without further fertilizing 
sowed to rye and a heavy coat of herd's 
grass and red top. The next season the 
rye was harvested, yielding a heavy return 
from the portion which bore the tobacco, 

38 




a: 









Interior Views of Warehouse showing Process of Casing Tobacco. Page 36 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

a fairly good return from the portion from 
which the potatoes had been taken, and 
a Hghter return from the corn tract. The 
stubble was cut and the tract was then 
left as grass-land, from which hay was 
harvested for several seasons. The re- 
turns of the latter from the portion of the 
tract devoted to corn failed first to give 
good results, the potato land came next 
in order, and the portion devoted to to- 
bacco was producing a good crop of hay 
some time after it became necessary to 
restock the potato and corn land for herd's 
grass. The experiment clearly demon- 
strated that the tobacco took less from 
the soil than the other two crops. 

Among other commodities shipped from 
East Windsor were pipe staves, pork, 
rye, Indian corn, oats, and a good many 
horses, a "large brownish bay shipped to 
Barbadoes in December, 1750, was valued 

39 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

at £150, Roan Dutch mare £40, a Dark- 
ish Roan £90." 

Passing from the consideration of these 
especial features of the community, other 
phases of East Windsor local life attract 
our attention. The parish east of the 
river was from 1694, for a period of sixty- 
three years, under the ministry of Rev. 
Timothy Edwards, father of the cele- 
brated Jonathan. We find from the rec- 
ords that: 

In 1720 one hundred and forty people 
were assessed for taxes to support the 
church on the east side of the Connecticut 
River. Among these Roger Wolcott was 
assessed on an estate of 115 pounds; Si- 
mon Wolcott 124 pounds; Henry Wolcott, 
105 pounds; Grace Grant, 156 pounds. 
Grace Grant was the widow of Samuel 
Grant, Jr., and the mother of Ebenezer 

to whom reference has been made. Samuel 
40 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

Grant, Jr., was the grandson of Matthew 
Grant, the historic town clerk of Windsor. 
Ebenezer was fitted for Yale College by 
Mr. Edwards, and in the account of his 
tuition frequent charges against his mother 
appear on Mr. Edwards' book. In this 
connection it is an instructive feature of 
colonial life to consider the immense edu- 
cational work undertaken by that hum- 
ble minister. Twenty-three young men 
studied with Mr. Edwards, some of them 
from other towns, and many of them 
afterward entered and graduated from 
Yale College. Among the best known was 
Alexander Wolcott, son of Governor Roger 
Wolcott, who in 1729 came, to use the 
quaint language of Mr. Edwards, "to 
be instructed in the tongues, namely, to 
be further instructed for the revival of 
his learning." For this tuition Governor 

Wolcott paid Mr. Edwards in X730 four 
41 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

shillings and one pence. Among other 
names we find those of Abijah Skinner, 
Joseph Newberry, John Anderson, John 
Wolcott, Aaron Bissell, and Isaac Stiles. 
The latter afterward graduated from Yale, 
and was the father of President Stiles of 
Yale College. On January 8, 1728, Samuel 
Talcott, Governor Talcott's son, came for 
instruction in the Latin tongue. I'he list 
also includes the famous Jonathan. 

The houses of these colonists may be 
considered as divided into three classes, 
proportioned to the wealth and social 
distinction of their ov/ners. Of those now 
standing in this community, a lean-to 
house built in 1725 on the east side of 
Main Street known as the Eph. Grant 
house, and nearly opposite the present 
residence of Mr. Roswell Grant, may be 
taken as a fair type of the average farm- 
house at the time of Mr. Edwards' labors. 

42 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

A typical house of what may be called 
the more advanced condition of the people 
is still standing, and was built by Dr. 
Matthew Rockwell, who was at one time 
engaged to marry Mary Edwards, sister 
of Jonathan; nearby the Grant mansion, 
so called, on the west side of Main Street, 
still standing on the ancestral acres granted 
to Samuel Grant in 1680, represents the 
highest social condition of a prosperous 
farmer merchant of the same period. The 
Grant house was constructed as it now 
stands principally by Ebenezer Grant, the 
merchant to whom we have referred, 
although the rear part is supposed to be 
much older and to go back as far as 1684. 
The peculiarity of many of these older 
houses consists of the fact that usually 
the cellar was on the north side, and ex- 
tended only under one-half of the house. 

That is the case in the Ephraim Grant 
43 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

house, and was also the case in the old 
Verstille house, which was at one time 
occupied by Mr. Perry, Timothy Edwards' 
colleague. It was also a distinguishing 
feature of the several houses built about 
the same time in the neighboring town 
of East Hartford, and in many of them 
also the north room was always the better 
finished of the lower rooms, and very 
often located over the cellar. 

There was at one time a turbulent spirit 
abroad in Mr. Edwards' parish, so in one 
of his sermons he particularly notes the 
decline in courtesy which should be ex- 
tended by young people to their elders, 
and remarks that the young men do not 
raise their hats to their elders when they 
meet them on the street. This tendency 
toward a laxity of manners attracted the 
attention of so distinguished a commenta- 
tor as Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth, who 

.44 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

in his memoranda preserved by his son 
and transmitted for the edification of 
future generations, deplores the fact that 
"there has been developed an indifference 
in those things which tend toward the 
development of the better side of human 
nature and to the cultivation of the spirit 
of gentlemanly forbearance and courtesy 
between brethren." 

A glimpse at these New England homes 
from 1680 to 1750 exhibits on the whole 
a very large variety of conditions. There 
were some families in whom the spirit of 
worldliness was so deeply entrenched that 
the greatest self-sacrifice of a devoted 
pastor and the solicitude of friends were 
alike indifferently received. Mr. Ed- 
wards' sermons offer interesting sugges- 
tions relative to the condition of the church 
and the community where he labored. 
The manuscripts bear notes of the various 

45 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

circumstances under which they were de- 
livered, — times of mourning, thanksgiv- 
ing, fasting, and drought. In 1748 he 
makes the following note upon a sermon: 
"East Windsor, on a fast day, kept by 
many of the inhabitants of this place, 
namely, of this church and society, by 
my desire, in a time of very great and sore 
drought, to seek to God for rain. 

"August 30, 1748." 

Another has a memorandum: "East 
Windsor on a lecture day, March 6, 
1705-6." Then on September 30, 1711, 
he quaintly observes that the sermon was 
preached ," being the next Sabbath after 
my return home and after my sickness in 
the camp, when I went, one of the chap- 
lains to our regiment in our expedition, 
etc., this year, being much better than 
I had been while abroad, and still in a 
recovering way." 

46 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

On November 24, 1744, he makes note 
of preaching a Thanksgiving sermon on 
the day appointed by Governor Law, and 
an interesting and touching example of 
his fidelity to his work is suggested by 
the memorandum attached to a sermon 
which he notes as preached at Captain 
John Ellsworth's house at a religious 
meeting. 

Mr. Edwards' power as a preacher, 
which descended in an intense degree of 
eloquence and logical force to his son, made 
him conspicuous as one to whom neigh- 
boring churches turned for spiritual relief. 
In 1712-13 he prepared a sermon to be 
preached in Middletown, a discourse on 
the death of a minister, and also in 1704-05 
an elaborate sermon on sacrament day. 

These are not the studied efforts of 
great occasions, but the common preach- 
ing of pastoral duty for God's glory in a 

47 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

humble New England hamlet. In 1694 
the church at Suffield had fallen into a 
disturbed and dissonant condition. In 
October of that year Mr. Edwards 
preached an elaborate sermon at the 
church, and remarks that it was a fast 
day, in which he rebukes with fearless and 
forcible eloquence the hypocrisy and sinful- 
ness of that community, — a sermon which 
it is well worth studying with reference to 
one particular point, that although this 
educated, stern, and fearless man never 
hesitated to rebuke evil or to differ from 
his neighbors or to reproach those in high 
places, who justly deserved it, he says, 
that " God is wont in his judgments to 
remember mercy and doth not commonly 
stir up all his wrath against his people, 
and therefore this should oblige them to 
repent of their sins against Him, and un- 
feignedly with all their hearts to turn 

48 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

toward Him, and with the spirit within 
them to seek Him early." 

While we are not informed as to the 
particular delinquencies of the people of 
SufBeld, that there must have been some 
special reason for Mr. Edwards' long and 
careful arraignment of their weaknesses 
is apparent from the third application of 
the sermon which we are now considering, 
in which he says: "Have not you, ye 
people of this town, the inhabitants of 
this place, for some years been under the 
awful angry frowns of Heaven, and are you 
not so now.f*" And again he reminds them 
more especially with respect to some awful 
and sad expressions and touches of divine 
anger peculiarly and immediately con- 
cerning themselves, that "God had cut 
them short in the fruit of the year, as well 
as their neighbors and that for some years 
he cut you short also in the ordinance of 

49 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

his Gospel, so that in a more awful way 
than your neighbors round about you, 
have you not been awfully damned in the 
ways of God's providence?" 

In 1709 he preached a sermon to his own 
people on a day of thanksgiving, being 
the next week after a public fast, "upon 
the account of our fatal disappointment 
in our expedition against the French and 
Indian enemies, Wednesday, third of No- 
vember, 1709." In 1741 the community 
was afflicted with what Mr. Edwards 
terms the "throat distemper." On No- 
vember 29 of that year he preached a 
sermon which he delivered on the "second 
Sabbath after Enoch Morris lost his son 
of about eleven years, and the last of the 
children by the throat distemper." 

A carefully prepared sermon of Mr. 

Edwards' contains this memorandum in 

his handwriting: "East Windsor, May, 
50 




Rear View of the Ephraiin Grant House, South Windsor. Pag^e 78 







Old Aaron Bissell Tavern as it was at the close of the Revolutionary War. Pa^^e 72 




Front Hall of Grant House showing Wainscot and Panelling. Pa^e 74 




Sword carried by Colonel Stoughton in the Revolutionary War, and Flint-lock 
Musket, six feet long, with which the last Indian killed in East Hartford, was 
shot, about 1750 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

1712, on the second article of the writing 
drawn up by the ministers of Hartford, 
Windsor and Farmington, A. D., 1711, 
and solemnly and generally engaged to on 
the east side of the river at Windsor. 
The article is this, namely: We will care- 
fully watch any signs of irreverence in the 
worship of God and of profanation of his 
glorious and fearful name, by causeless 
imprecations and rash swearing, or in 
any other way in which it is or may be 
taken in vain," — a topic which may 
well commend itself to the present gen- 
eration of ministers as one to be fre- 
quently enlarged upon in this year of 
grace 1910. 

Neither was there anything in Mr. 
Edwards' whole ministry of that tem- 
porizing policy by which the church has 
too often been compromised at the ex- 
pense of the principles upon which it was 

51 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

founded by Him whose kingdom is not 
of this world. 

Mr. Edwards appears to have been ever 
ready to contribute from his book-shelves 
such reading as would help his neighbors. 
He makes the memoranda in April, 1726: 
"Lent Sergeant Rockwell the 'Medita- 
tions of a Saint seeking after Christ,' with 
another book concerning the experiences 
of a Scotch minister." And on June 6 
he "lent Brother Whitman one of Jona- 
than's books concerning Christianity or 
some such subject by a German divine." 
In May he "lent neighbor Rockwell a 
book called 'The Pious Soul Seeking after 
Christ, in a hundred meditations,' with 
another called 'Pillars of Salt.'" 

Joseph Skinner, who seems to have 
been exceedingly handy as an all-round 
man, appears on Mr. Edwards' account 
book in the shape of a credit by a turkey 

52 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COIVOIERCE 

and by a dozen pigeons. Wild pigeons 
were exceedingly numerous, and are fre- 
quently entered up in the local memoranda 
as a portion of household stores. On 
August 27, Mr. Edwards credits Joseph 
Skinner by drawing a tooth for his daugh- 
ter Esther, and by drawing a tooth for 
Abigail, one shilling; September 19, by 
drawing a tooth, one shilling, which pre- 
sumably was one of the pastor's molars, 
as he makes no suggestion as to whom it 
belonged. May 7, 1726, Lucy Edwards 
lost a tooth at the same skilful hands, 
and on June 14, 1727, Joseph Skinner 
again extracted a tooth for Lucy, and 
stopped long enough to varnish two chairs, 
for which the pastor credits him two shill- 
ings and eightpence. August 3, 1727, he 
is quaintly credited by "a dozen and half 
of pigeons, and a dozen more, and half 

a dozen more, in all three dozen, one shill- 
53 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

ing and threepence." Possibly this extra 
brushing, varnishing, and tooth pulling 
had reference to the coming wedding of 
Esther, who married the Rev. Samuel 
Hopkins of West Springfield, Mass. This 
was the second wedding of Mr. Edwards' 
daughters, the second daughter Eliza- 
beth having married Colonel Jabez Hunt- 
ington of Windham, June, 1724. 

Although Mr. Edwards had a farm 
which was given to him at the time of his 
settlement and on which his father had 
built him a house, yet the increased ex- 
penses of a large family and the depre- 
ciation in the purchasing power of the 
currency reduced him at times to con- 
siderable extremities. In 1735 Mr. Ed- 
wards' salary was one hundred and 
thirty -five pounds, but his family was ex- 
pensive, and the provision for the marriage 
of his daughters had drawn heavily upon 

54 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

his income. In a blank space on one of his 
sermons he states what he calls " a case,'* 
as follows: "Whether a minister wanting 
wherewithal comfortably to live in the 
world and provide for his family, and that 
not through the inability of the people, 
and after much painstaking in the use of 
proper means, hath no prospect of the 
supply of that want by those whom he 
serves in the work of the ministry, may 
not on that account lawfully leave his 
people and remove." At this time Mr. 
Edwards had been for forty-one consecu- 
tive years pastor of the East Windsor 
Church. One can hardly look back 
through the decades to that solitary 
scholar in a wilderness and be entirely 
unmoved at the pathos of the situa- 
tion. And he indeed is a lesson to 
those who in the home work at times feel 
that the stress of circumstances, combin- 

55 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COM^IERCE 

ing with the opportunities for larger pay, 
tempt them strongly to hie from parish 
to parish. At this time he makes some 
comparisons between the cost of living in 
1735 and 1694, the year of his settlement. 
He refers to land, and says that Deacon 
Drake told him that land when he came 
there was worth four pounds in money, 
and now it is seven times as dear. When 
he came, he says a good large deerskin was 
dressed for four shillings and sixpence in 
money, and now such^a skin, his neighbors 
tell him, would cost four pounds in the 
hair. He says rum was sold in former 
years in Hartford for four shillings for the 
single gallon; now he hears that it is eigh- 
teen shillings a gallon, which leads him to 
the conclusion that rum is nine times as 
dear as it was when he settled among 
them. Then after referring to the ad- 
vanced cost of sugar, labor, rye, pork, and 
56 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

wheat he pauses in his twenty-first memo- 
randum to consider quaintly the cost of 
negro labor, and to quote his own lan- 
guage: "negro was formerly 90 pounds; 
my negro was; now 200 pounds for a 
negro woman." Mr. Edwards had two 
negro slaves or servants; one he bought 
from Governor Wolcott, and another 
was purchased from an unknown source, 
and frequently he loaned or hired them 
out to his neighbors for a moderate 
compensation. 

Connecticut had been settled nearly 
sixty years when Windsor became a con- 
spicuous and far-reaching influence in the 
state. Other causes had combined with 
the first great cause to force a steady 
stream of immigration to New England, 
and a consideration of the condition of 
England from 1680 to 1724 seems neces- 
sary to a proper understanding of the 

57 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

social and political conditions of Windsor. 
The revels of the court following the 
Restoration and the sharp alternations of 
a fluctuating power for a long time per- 
mitted in England one day free speech and 
free writing, and on the morrow closed by 
censorship the press and the voice of con- 
tributors by imprisonment in the Tower. 

Persecutions drove men to New England 
whose hearts were more or less hardened 
by repeated blows of fortune, so that to 
properly make just comparisons between 
various elements in the colonies we must 
look at the home land. Here a genera- 
tion had been born. Truly, indeed, it had 
come to the fullness of its manhood under 
the impulse which energized and strength- 
ened the first settlers ; but another genera- 
tion mingling with the new-comxcrs from 
England were taking their places among 
the rank and file, so that the forces in 

58 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

church and state were sometimes in a 
warring and discordant attitude. To cor- 
rect these the colonies originated a re- 
markable legislative code, and the names 
of Ludlow, Haynes, Warren, Edwards, 
Wolcott, the Ellsworths, Grants, Loom- 
ises, and a host of Gideons and Barachs, 
of which time will fail to tell, had assumed 
the reins of government and massed the 
forces of a far-reaching Christian civiliza- 
tion. We must not wonder that there 
were stern and relentless minds among 
these colonists, — some of them were fresh 
from England at a time when London 
Bridge was ornamented with mouldering 
heads of state criminals, when there 
was nothing like a daily paper pub- 
lished in England, the only source of 
general information to the people being 
the occasional news letters and London 
Gazette, the latter issued two days in a 

59 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

week, and timidly venturing to record 
only such doings of government as a relent- 
less censorship permitted. So closely su- 
pervised was it that on November 16, 1685, 
not a word appears in its columns about 
the trial and acquittal of the seven bishops. 
At this time there was scarcely a printer 
in the kingdom outside of the universities 
and at the capital, a condition which ex- 
tended its baleful repression over a quarter 
of a century, so that in 1724 there were 
thirty -four counties in England where there 
was no printer, and of those counties one 
was Lancashire. 

The cultivation of the female mind in 
the seventeenth century, to use the words 
of Macaulay, "seems to have been almost 
entirely neglected in England," and even 
slow as was the communication between 
the colonies and the mother country, it 
is impossible for us to believe that the 

60 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

effect of this depressing and debasing 
social condition in England was not keenly 
felt in the colonies. We turn, therefore, 
with the more admiration to these men of 
the wilderness whose school laws, whose 
pauper laws, whose laws on the domestic 
relations, whose enactments concerning 
trade among themselves, constitute a code 
of admirable proportions. From a day 
when English masters beat their pupils, 
and husbands of decent women were not 
ashamed to whip their wives, when books 
were in so small a demand in the then 
prosperous town of Birmingham, Eng- 
land, that Michael Johnson, father of the 
noted Samuel Johnson, could supply from 
a temporary booth in the market-place in 
a few hours the total demand, we turn 
with admiration to the wisdom of the 
Connecticut colonists. 
The legislature of Connecticut, however, 

61 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

had kept a careful watch over and antici- 
pated any tendency toward extravagance 
in dress, and on May, 1676, the General 
Court passed the following act: "Whereas 
excess in apparel amongst us is unbecom- 
ing a wilderness condition and a profession 
of the Gospel whereby the rising genera- 
tion is in danger to be 'indangered' which 
practices are testified against in God's 
holy Word, it is therefore ordered by this 
Court and authority thereof, that what 
person whatsoever shall wear gold or 
silver lace or silver buttons, silk ribbons, 
or other costly superfluous trimmings, or 
any bone lace above three shillings per 
yard, or silk scarfs, the list makers of the 
respective towns are hereby required to 
assess such persons so offending, or their 
husbands, parents or masters under whose 
government they are, in the list of the 
states, at 150 pounds each." 

62 




:■«!.,-' 
,-«»«• 



Detail of the front hall of the Grant House showing Original Furniture and the 
ancient clock, fnge 74 







•tl -^ 




A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

One may well stop to query what the 
domestic scene would be in 1910 if the 
husband were directed specially by law 
to investigate the exact cost of his wife's 
wardrobe, and should actually investigate 
and report to the assessors. 

The character of the East Windsor 
population and the multiplicity of its 
affairs is illustrated by the occupations 
of some of the more prominent citizens. 
Deacon Job Drake was a tailor; Samuel 
Grant, the son of old Matthew Grant, was 
a carpenter and proprietor of a cider mill; 
Nathaniel Bissell owned a cider mill and 
was a ferryman and shoemaker; Peter 
Mills, Jr., was a tailor; Samuel Elmer 
was a weaver; Thomas Marshall, a wheel- 
wright; the local blacksmith was Thomas 
Burnham; John Wolcott was a brewer; 
the East Windsor brickmaker was Simon 
Drake; and later, in 1725, we find that 

63 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

Jabez Colt was weaving cloth for Mr. 
Edwards. 

Some reference having been made to 
the difficulty in curbing and restraining 
the manners of Mr. Edwards' parish, and 
as the east and west parishes of Windsor 
were practically identical in this respect, 
it may be interesting to quote the opinion 
of Chief Justice Ellsworth, that most 
distinguished son of old Windsor, who 
at the age of forty-seven years says, ac- 
cording to memoranda made by his son, 
that when he was a boy "all ate upon 
wooden trenchers, that manners were then 
coarse and such that would now in many 
respects prove disgusting, that men in 
Windsor formerly assembled together in 
each other's houses and would drink out 
a barrel of cider in one night." 

In the year 1741 occurred the remark- 
able awakening and revival of spiritual 
64 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

interest which very generally stirred Mr. 
Edwards' parish, and at the same time 
witnessed the strained relations between 
the pastor and the people regarding mat- 
ters which at the present day we should 
consider extremely trivial. 

When the town was first settled the 
dangers incident to occasional Indian in- 
cursions and the difficulty of communica- 
tion between distantly separated families 
prevented the development of a close so- 
cial union, but it is remarkable to observe 
the fidelity with which these sturdy settlers 
forced themselves to attend divine service, 
often under circumstances of actual distress 
and vast inconvenience. So late as June 
30, 1706, Solomon Andross killed one of 
several Indians who broke into his house. 

Several attempts were made to divide 
the parish, and a vast amount of discus- 
sion, flavored with some printed comments 

65 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

in the line of alleged poetry, contributed 
to keep the matter at fever heat. At the 
same time Jabez Colt, whom we will re- 
call as a weaver, mixed up the warp and 
woof of his complaint in the following 
metrical wail, to show why the meeting 
house on the east side of the river was not 
conveniently located. We select from the 
fifteen or twenty stanzas one as follows: 

'^ One other reason yet there is which I will 
unfold, 
How many of us suffer much, both by the 

heat and cold. 
It is four milds which some of us do go 
Upon God's holy Sabbath day in times of 

frost and snow. 
Two milds we find in Holy Writ a Sabbath 

day's journey be 
But wherefore then are we compelled for to 
go more than three ? " 

The productive power of this commu- 
nity is beyond calculation. Its perennial 
66 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

streams have fertilized distant and un- 
known fields, and from an unremitting 
source of supply through two hundred 
years have made fruitful waste places 
touched by their refreshing waters. 

He who enters into and comes to an 
understanding of that simple life and its 
labors, views its sacrifices, and feels the 
spirit of its aspirations and sympathizes 
with its toilers, will feel the fullness of 
its force and stand like a privileged 
visitor on the threshold of national 
greatness. 

We of to-day may well imitate the 
slow and cautious policy of the fathers. 
One can scarcely read the humble pream- 
bles of their early legislation without feel- 
ings of deep pathos. They left untouched 
none of the fountains of human blessings, 
and if at times their legislation is particu- 
lar and sometimes minute, it was based 

67 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

upon the desire that all should share 
equally in the laws and participate fully 
in the benefits of civil liberty. 

The salvation of New England from 
materialism, and if of New England, of 
the nation, and if of this nation, then the 
speedy help for all people, is yet to be 
found in these her ancient towns, — these 
abiding places of that stern and magnifi- 
cent faith which has left its impression on 
state and national councils. These little 
churches just now so feebly nourished will 
yet live to see the refluent force of their 
generosity return from the Orient to en- 
large and beautify the places from which 
it went forth. The Bible holds no uncer- 
tain place in the hearts of many to-day, 
and here where once it was a basis and a 
part of common school instruction, here 
again New England manhood shall receive 

a new vitality and the common people 
68 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

shall yet hear it gladly. Here the charity 
that commenced at home in the legisla- 
tion in 1700 will yet adorn the glorious 
temple of its ancient faith. It is a false 
construction of language, a fallacious, a 
pernicious abandonment of principles, a 
weakening of every muniment of title 
to nationality, and a hateful blow at the 
leaders of our ever-extending civilization 
when through cowardice or for lack of 
faith the Bible is shut out of the common 
schools and closed to the eager and sus- 
ceptible minds of youth. If these Con- 
necticut towns suffer to-day any decad- 
ence, any abatement of their moral force 
and intellectual strength, it is because 
they have forgotten the teachings of the 
fathers and substituted for the simple and 
direct influence of the Bible upon educa- 
tion, the evasive, the uncertain, and almost 
pernicious doctrines of a let-alone policy. 

69 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

Let it be restored and made a part of our 
educational system. Restore it now, be- 
fore the foundations laid by the fathers 
crumble into indistinguishable fragments, 
— restore it and leave its influence without 
other comment than its benign words carry 
with them. We send it to the heathen, 
and rejoice at their coming into the light. 
We make it the basis of education from 
Cape Town to the frozen zone. Grand 
triumphs of the century are based upon 
it. It is the handmaid of civilization 
throughout the world. Merchants take it 
to the Orient; missionaries carry it into 
every quarter of the globe; we send it by 
thousands of copies into the dominion of 
the Sultan; and print it on American 
presses in Constantinople. We translate 
it into every language where Christian 
charity touches mankind, and then stul- 
tify the work by banishing it from the 
70 




Rear view of the Ephraim Grant House showing peculiar reinforced chimney 

Page 78 




Present Appearance of the birthplace of Jonathan Edwards, 
South Windsor, Connecticut. Page 79 




One of the old Pitkin Houses in East Hartford, Connecticut. I\ige S5 




Burial-place of Timothy Edwards, South Windsor, Connecticut. Page 78 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

schools of our children in this wide and 
ever-extending domain of the fathers. 

It was to Connecticut that Daniel Web- 
ster paid his distinguishing tribute in the 
United States Senate when he spoke of her 
as "that State so small in territory but so 
distinguished for learning and talent, Con- 
necticut," and at the same time referred 
to Oliver Ellsworth, her distinguished son, 
as "a gentleman who had left behind 
him on the records of his Government 
and his Country proofs of the clearest in- 
telligence and of the utmost purity and 
integrity of character"; and it is worthy 
of remark that Mr. Ellsworth's bearing and 
character were such when he was in France 
that the Emperor Napoleon, then First 
Consul of France, was so impressed by his 
meeting with him that he said, "We shall 
have to make a treaty with that man." 



71 




n 

OME reference to the homesteads of 
the period we are considering may 
properly close this transient view 
of the business routine of the colonists. 
The accompanying illustrations will give 
a fair idea of the prevailing architecture 
of the New England homes from about 
1700 to the close of the Revolutionary 
period, as they were then occupied by the 
people of Old Windsor, east of the Con- 
necticut River. 

Among the conspicuous houses of that 
era was the Captain Aaron Bissell tavern, 
a picture of which is subjoined. This was 
a famous place of rendezvous for the or- 
ganized militia during the Revolutionary 

72 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

period, and an order of Colonel Lemuel 
Stoughton is extant in which they are 
notified to "rendezvous at Aaron Bissell's 
tavern." 

This building was about forty-five feet 
in length and thirty-five feet in width, 
with an ell extending to the west, contain- 
ing the kitchen and living room of the 
proprietor and his family, over which was 
the ball room, so-called. The tavern stood 
on the west side of Main Street, facing the 
east, at what is now known as East Windsor 
Hill, and was located on the old stage 
route from Hartford to Springfield; the 
route not being wholly discontinued until 
about 1876, when railroad facilities east 
of the river did away with this slower 
method of conveyance. 

The room in the southeast corner of the 
building, entered through the portico, was 

the old tap room or bar room, and was 

73 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

fitted in a simple but convenient manner 
for dispensing the small variety of liquors 
then handed out to the casual wayfarer. 
It was open upon the north side and looked 
out upon an ample lounging room with a 
wide fireplace and the usual appointments 
of a colonial inn. 

Among the substantial houses of the 
neighborhood was the house built by 
Ebenezer Grant, and still standing in a 
good state of preservation on the same 
side of the street about half a mile below 
the Bissell tavern. To quote Mr. Grant's 
own language: "Memorandum for Ma- 
terials for my House. Began in 1757 and 
finished in 1758." The accompanying 
illustration shows the detail of the door- 
way and the general appearance of the 
front of the house. The interior finish of 
the front hall is also shown, the brass 

clock having been in the old house since 
74 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

1765, and bears date on the brass work, 
1670. The substantial character of the 
work upon the house may be inferred from 
some items taken from Mr. Grant's ac- 
count book. 

Tomas Sad Jr bill for getting stone £9 01s 93^d 
Math^ Grant do with him 8 08s 2.0 

Carting 60 load stone from hill at 5s 15 00 00 
9 boatloads stone from ye Falls at 10s 

viz. 3 days, 4 iq qO 

Carting 30 load from Scantick at 18d 2 05 00 
30 load in my old seller 7 lo 00 

3 load Haydens stone and carting and 

boating I 00 00 

Will™ Buckley bill for hewing 23 17 06 

71 12 5y2 
To digging seller and laying wall 7 00 00 



78 12 53^ 
To ye frame with ye [Lahor] about £40 00s OOd 
To ye raising, dinner, etc., 5 00 00 

Masons bill 29 06 06 

Tending mason 4 18 00 34 4 6 

To 26000 brick at 20s 26 00 00 

To 14000 cedar shingles at 20s 14 00 00 

75 



10 05 


00 


4 10 


00 


97 10 


00 


8 08 


00 


19 12 


00 


6 00 


00 


7 00 


00 


: 9 00 


00 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMI^IERCE 

To 2050 cedar clapboards at 5£ 
To 1500 sawed white pine do at 6£ 
To 37000 board 10 white pine at 3£ ye 

rest yallo at 5£ 
To 14000 lath at 12s 
To 14 HHd of Ume stone at 28s 
To a bar' of linseed oyle at 4s per gal. 
120 lbs, white lead at lid per lb., and 

do. Spanish white at 3d per lb. 
To 3 boxes of window glass at 3£ per box 9 
To 16000 8d nails at 9s and 4 lbs. 10s 

cash for Double tens, 10 00 00 

To a bar of tens and 14000 4d nails at 

4s and 45000 lath nails at 3s 9 11 00 

To brads 

To Gray's bill of joynering 
To Aaron Grants for do 
To Abiel Grant do 
To Josiah Pinny do 
To Isaac Clark 

"1757. Raised my house June 24. 
Aaron J/^ day to nail lap studs." 

The Matthew Rockwell house, built 

before 1750 and, as the story goes, erected 

by Rockwell as a home for himself and 
76 



46 11 


07 


47 19 


3 


19 6 


8 


16 07 


04 


2 09 


03 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

prospective bride, who was to have been 
Mary Edwards, a sister of the renowned 
Jonathan, presents the peculiarity of hav- 
ing all the lower sash one row of lights 
smaller than the upper sash through the 
whole house, and is the only building in 
the neighborhood that exhibits that dis- 
tinguishing feature. In this house the cel- 
lar was finished on the south side and was 
about ten by twenty feet in dimension, 
paved with brick, with a large fireplace 
in the center, with an oven, — there being 
no oven, as was ordinarily the case, on 
the main floor. While some attempt was 
made at architectural decoration on the 
exterior of the house, the cornice being 
very heavy and projecting about twenty 
inches, the interior finish was exceedingly 
plain, but substantial. 

Another old house in the immediate 

vicinity, known as the Ephraim Grant 

77 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

house, stood on the east side of the street, 
and was removed to make way for a mod- 
ern structure during the year of 1909. 
This house was built before 1740, and the 
two views herewith give a very clear idea 
of the lean-to building of that period. The 
ceilings were very low, only about six 
and one-half feet between joints, and 
the windows were originally glazed with 
diamond-shaped panes which gave place 
during the Revolutionary period to small 
six by eight glass. 

A half mile below was the old burial 
ground, and the tomb in the foreground 
of the accompanying illustration is that 
of Rev. Timothy Edwards. 

The other illustration shows all that 
remains of the homestead where Jonathan 
Edwards was born, in 1703. The well- 
curb in the foreground marks the original 
well of the homestead. The old house 

78 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

stood a little to the northwest of the well 
and facing Main Street. 

The building shown in the photograph 
has no relation whatever to the Edwards' 
property. 

A house illustrating very conspicuously 
the substantial character of the homes of 
the wealthiest citizens was built by Colonel 
Joseph Pitkin in 1726, in East Hartford, 
about four miles below East Windsor Hill. 
This was constructed after the old scribe 
rule plan by which each stud or piece of 
timber was marked or scribed for the 
particular place it was to occupy. The 
sills were of oak, forty-one feet long, 
eight by ten inches, with the wide face 
laid upon the underpinning. The super- 
structure, which was thirty by forty-one 
feet, was supported on oak posts nine by 
nine inches at the bottom and ten by fifteen 
inches at the top, being mortised about half- 

79 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

way up to receive the cross beams of white 
oak eight by twelve inches which were 
heavily tennoned into the posts and se- 
cured by three one and one quarter inch oak 
pins. These beams were thirty feet long 
and carried all the weight of the second 
floors, without any studding to support 
them from end to end. The house was 
entered upon the south side by stepping 
over the sill on to a floor laid upon loose 
joists, dropped a sufficient distance so 
that the floor came a little above the 
level of the bottom of the sill, the latter 
being neatly cased and boxed with a plain 
finish while a double door gave access to 
the front hall on the east. 

The cellar was built of stone and oc- 
cupied a portion of the north half of the 
building, which faced the east, making a 
cellar about fifteen by thirty feet. In many 
old houses the north room was finished 

80 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

better than the south room — this was 
true of the buildings herein mentioned. 

The interior finish of the rooms was 
heavy paneHng of native yellow and white 
pine, a portion of which still remains. 

The doors were generally of two panels, 
the upper panels being twenty -two inches 
wide by thirty-six inches long, the lower 
about twenty-two inches square, with 
wide bevels inserted in the gains cut in 
the center of the framework of the door, 
which were supported and hung upon 
wrought-iron H. L. hinges. This house 
was lathed with rived cedar lath averaging 
about Ij^ inches in width and 43^ feet 
long, and was plastered with a mixture of 
clay and hair, which after being smoothed 
over was subjected to two or three coats 
of whitewash. 

The structure was heated by five large 

fireplaces, — one opening into the kitchen, 
81 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

containing a spacious oven, and the others 
devoted to the purpose of heating the living 
room and chambers. 

Several of the sleeping apartments were 
furnished with high-post tester beds, the 
posts of which were mortised into the floor 
for stability, and extended to the ceiling, 
supporting a framework from which was 
draped the heavy curtain which could be 
drawn to insure warmth and protection 
from the bitter New England weather. 

Some idea of the splendid forests which 
supplied the material for building at that 
period, may be gathered from the fact 
that the garret floor of this Pitkin house, 
which was thirty by forty feet in area, 
required only twenty-two boards to cover 
the thirty feet in width, the lumber being 
about fifteen feet long. 

The floors were laid with a ship-lap and 
spiked to the joist by heavy, wrought-iron 

82 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COIMMERCE 

nails. The house was studded with three 
by four oak studs, mortised into the sills 
and plates, to which were nailed sheath- 
ing boards, the edges of the boards being 
beveled so as to make a tight joint, and 
then reinforced by an inner sheathing 
upon which the laths were nailed to receive 
the inside finish of plaster. 

The summers, which extended from 
north to south through the center of the 
house, were heavily dovetailed into the 
beams, and were about eight by twelve 
inches of heavy yellow pine. From- the 
outside beams to the summers three by 
four oak joists were laid to support the 
floor. The main plates were seven inches 
square, of white oak, forty-one feet long; the 
upper ends of the posts which were ten by 
fifteen, were halved and cut down so that 
the plates dropped in upon the top of the 
posts and there securely pinned and framed. 

83 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

The king rafters, which were five by six 
inches and about twenty-two feet long, 
of white oak, were placed edgeways, and 
each one framed in and over the plate on 
to the outside portion of the posts which 
finished even with the plate. About half- 
way from the plate to the peak of the roof, 
string-piece rafters, four by five, of white 
oak, were framed into the king rafters so 
as to support the ordinary rafters of the 
roof from the peak to the eaves, and 
served the purpose of purlin plates. 

In making some repairs upon the house 
a stock of clean square edged lumber was 
removed, measuring fully twenty-six and 
a half inches in width, indicating the splen- 
did quality and size of the pine timber 
that once clothed the uplands and slopes 
of the lower Connecticut Valley. 

Over each fireplace a beveled, heavy 
pine panel about four feet by twenty-six 
84 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

inches was framed into the wainscoting, 
and some of the rooms were ornamented 
with rude landscape paintings. 

The garret door was made of two pieces 
of board rived and split out from native 
yellow pine. The heavy material of the 
structure of the house was mostly hewn. 
The Pitkins in 1684 and later owned saw 
mill privileges on the Hockanum River 
from which the finishing lumber was 
doubtless obtained. 

Another house located in East Hartford, 
also originally built by the Pitkins, is 
shown in the following cut, and is a type 
of the substantial character of the build- 
ings which succeeded the original shacks 
and smaller dwellings of the first settlers. 
But, after all, the contents of the deserted 
garrets and dilapidated chambers which 
remain, furnish the most complete picture 

of the domestic life of the period. 
85 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COIVOIERCE 

The subjoined illustration is a photo- 
graph of a letter written by Chief Justice 
Oliver Ellsworth to Mr. Roswell Grant, 
of East Windsor, and the following memo- 
randa from the old records are indicative 
of the homely life of the dwellers in the 
wilderness. 

The following quotation from Captain 
Lemuel Stoughton's papers contains a 
suggestive bit of pathos as to the strain 
under which the colonies were laboring 
after the Revolutionary struggle with the 
mother country was fully under way: 

"East Windsor, April 21, 177. 

"We the Subscribers being convened by orders 
for ye Great & important purpose of furnishing 
our Proportion of men for the Continental! Army 
& notwithstanding the encouragement heretofore 
made by ye Hon''^' Continental! congress and this 
State and town; there appears a backwardness we 
the subscribers therefore considering ye necesaty 
of our furnishing our coto are willing and promis 
to pay to Capt. James Harper and Capt. Lemuel 
86 





iZ ^2'^^ C^'-" fritr , .O^i \ :-^< ■ (-. '". 






A' 






1/ Ln'-^CL -^'i^l. '^;hJL,zr^i'\.CLttqnL 



CL ttqn L ^ 






/ 






T;>^:./- 



Facsimile of letter of Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth to Captain Roswell Grant, of 
East Windsor, during the sessions of the Constitutional Convention 

Pag-e S6 








^£Z^^K/C-^ 







\ ■ 
L 

Facsimile of " Pen Knife "Letter of General Washington, /'a^? i 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

Stoughton ye sums we annex to our names Provided 
there is a number sufficient appears and enlists to 
make up quota to be required for three years or 
during the war, and we order sd Harper and Stough- 
ton to collect forthwith and pay said sums to those 
so enlisting." 

Then follow the names of eighty -five resi- 
dents of East Windsor, including Bissells, 
Stoughtons, Barbours, Munsills, Aliens, 
Osborns, Loomises, Stileses, Blodgetts and 
Priors, the document being endorsed on 
the back by David Trumbull and John 
Ellsworth. 

This sample of what the old garrets of 
East Windsor now disclose is but a modi- 
cum of what might have been found by the 
antiquary fifty years before the remodeling 
of the old houses and the removal of 
families had taken place. 

In a memorandum in Captain Lemuel 
Stoughton's handwriting, dated at Scantic, 
the 10th of April, 1776, he itemizes the 

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A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

labor in carrying on the manufacture of 
"Salt Petre," which was used as a basis for 
the gunpowder supply. 

However, it is not the particular value 
of any one item disclosed by the antiquary, 
but the whole picture of colonial life, as 
unfolded from these homely records of the 
ancestors, that is worth preserving. With 
their perusal comes an ever-growing ven- 
eration for the men and the women who 
thought out, molded and transmitted to 
posterity our fundamental principles of 
civil, political and religious liberty. To 
dissociate religion and its salutary influ- 
ences on the administration of law from 
law making is a strong tendency of modern 
times; but it is calculated to undermine 
the foundations of the magnificent con- 
stitutional guarantees framed by the 
colonists in a spirit of reverence for the 
God of Nations. Indifference to religious 

88 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONL\L COMMERCE 

restraint will bring ruinous consequences, 
a long train of corroding evils upon our 
civilization, and produce moral wastes 
throughout our borders. 

In leaving this little group of state- 
builders, whose anticipations for the future 
were seemingly so small compared with 
the tremendous results of their labor, we 
can hardly do better than to present a 
fac-simile of one of General Washington's 
letters in which he hopes a Mr. Bayley 
can furnish him with a penknife. It is 
interesting to note minute particulars of 
the strong men who made up national 
life and nurtured its infancy so every 
word from Washington's pen whether 
pertaining to questions of government or 
to the common daily routine should be 
treasured by all true Americans. Out of 
the cobwebbed garrets from which we 
have exhumed the notes of this book, we 

89 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

come upon this valuable evidence — that 
the greatest of Americans was simply 
and plainly human, again illustrating the 
fact that great characters are never be- 
yond the finite needs and daily calls of 
their humble associates. 

There was small thought in the minds 
of the humble craftsmen who built their 
merchant sloops at the mouth of the Scan- 
tic that they were founding a commerce 
looking far beyond the little shallops of 
that day to the mighty fleet of American 
merchantmen now bearing that commerce 
into the ports of farthest India; and still 
less was the thought in the mind of the 
country's leader that his urgent demand 
for a penknife was but the exponent of 
the tremendous industrial forces which 
send the products of our country all over 
the world and challenge mankind to rival 
them in every branch of material develop- 

90 



A CORNER STONE OF COLONIAL COMMERCE 

ment. The attics and the garrets of that 
period of the Scantic sloop-builders were 
holding in their keeping records of the 
mighty forces which now unloosed have 
made American commerce and American 
honor a synonym for national integrity 
in every department of human effort. 



91 



SEP 20 1911 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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